Contingency: Rebound
by xenascully
Summary: Part 3 of Contingency series. Years after 'Causatum', Tony is cut off from the team when he's recruited by Fornell for an undercover mission that has lasted a lot longer than anyone had imagined. After a vision, McGee leads Gibbs, Bishop, and BAU agents Prentice and Reid on a hunt to find his teammate before it's too late...
1. Chapter 1

**Contingency: Rebound**

 **AN: This is the third installment of the Contingency series.**

 **I have been very absent in the fanfiction world for years now. But it appears that I'm bouncing back into it. This will be my third story in the past couple of weeks. I'm hoping this motivation/inspiration sticks around.**

 **Enjoy!**

 ***~.~***

Having time on your hands is more often than not, just the worst. If you have things to occupy that time, great! If not, however... If you're spending all that time doing so much of just _nothing_ it gives your brain a whole lot of time to think about dreaded _feelings_. Mostly the not good feelings, of course. Because it's not so much about being _alone_ that makes all of the nothing seem so terrible, but more about the lack of anything that makes you feel some inkling of good.

Well that was Tony's dilemma right now. It had been his dilemma for months now, actually, and why did they always have to come to _him_ with the high profile undercover cases, huh? Where did he have to click to unsubscribe from that option? It was bad enough when he was doing something like this while also balancing his busy work schedule with the MCRT. As difficult as that had been, he had to admit that being halfway across the country and forbidden to contact anyone outside of the job itself and Agent Fornell for reports, was really beginning to hurt. Not even just emotionally. Emotionally it'd started hurting way back in the beginning. It was kinda like when he'd been forced Agent Afloat all those years ago, except at least he got to communicate with the team in some fashion. Now the best he could do was get a thumbs up from Fornell that everyone was alive and okay back home.

Tony rubbed his hands down his face and let out a long breath. The color glowing from the crap TV was the only thing that lit up the hell hole of an apartment he was stuck in. He was tired of all of this waiting around, as that seemed to be most of what this entire crap case was at this point. No end in sight. If he didn't think it'd cost him his job, he'd quit just so he could go home now. Which was kind of ironic since he didn't even work for the goddamn FBI. Stupid SecNav and its stupid PR bullshit...

He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the couch, planting his elbows on his knees. It was late, and he should really be trying harder to sleep, but it just wasn't going to happen. All of the doing nothing made for a poor combination come bedtime. If Fornell would just give him some damn instructions so he could keep his mind occupied, that'd be amazing. Alas...the phone remained silent. His stomach felt empty and achy, and his head felt heavy. Sometimes he really hated his job...

*~.~*

"It's been three and a half months, Tobias!" Gibbs yelled into his phone. "Leon's tryin' to stick me with a replacement now!"

" _We didn't realize it'd take this much time, Jethro, but we're close. I can feel it."_

"And if you're wrong?" Gibbs heard Fornell sigh on the other line. "I want my agent back. You shouldn't have taken him for this in the first place."

" _You know he's the best man for it, much as I hate to admit."_

"And you know he doesn't like havin' to do these things anymore." His tone had softened some, but the heat behind it hadn't faded. "You've got him cut off from everyone. He's got nobody, Tobi."

" _He's got me,"_ he countered with a hint of sarcasm. _"And you know as well as I do, he needs to stay in his cover. He can't be a man with nothing to lose if he's got you checkin' in on 'im."_

"I want this done. You get this done with, you hear me? Finish the damn case!" He ended the call, tossing his phone to the workbench in his basement. Aside from Ziva leaving, the team hadn't been separated like this in ages. Especially not since the Contingency incident. Not that there had been any repeats of any abilities in the years leading up to Tony's assignment, but still...the closeness developed between them had only grown stronger, and now he wasn't there. He missed the hell out of the SFA, and he knew the rest of them did, too. Hell, lately he could swear McGee had looked on the verge of tears on a few unexpected occasions, but he'd never called him out on it. He knew Tim worried about Tony. Especially after Ziva went back to Tel Aviv and ended up being killed. How could he not relate the two?

The longer Tony was gone, the worse it seemed to get. The only joy Abby seemed to derive was when she, Bishop and Tim thought they were secretly teaming up after hours to try and figure out where Fornell had Tony. Not that Gibbs was going to stop them from doing so. As long as they were playing it safe, they secretly had his blessing. He just wished he could do something more to help, besides chewing Fornell's head off.

The sound of his front door closing drew Gibbs out of his thoughts. He looked up at the door at the top of the staircase, expecting whoever it was to come down, but after a few moments of nothing, his gut had him going upstairs instead, grabbing his gun from the bench before doing so. He peered around the corner from the doorway, squinting his eyes in concentration, then turned towards the living room. He lowered the gun when he saw McGee standing in the foyer, his head down and his fists clenched at his sides.

"Tim?" Gibbs slowly approached. The younger man's head picked up as he met Gibbs' eyes, and Gibbs' breath caught at the sight of him. Tim's eyes were red, face wet with tears and a mixture of embarrassment and devastation plastered his features. _"Oh god...what did they find?"_ Gibbs thought as he set his gun down on the table. "What is it? What's wrong?" he asked as he approached him the rest of the way.

"I-" Tim's breath shook, and he tried to steady himself enough to inhale. "Uh...this is gonna sound...crazy, boss," he began. "But can I uh... Can I...hug you for a minute?" He looked back down after asking the question, and Gibbs surprised him by taking the small step forward to pull the younger man into an embrace.

Gibbs felt Tim's arms snake around his back to return the hug, somewhat melting into him. He could feel the silent, quaking sobs and it just about pushed him over, too.

"Hey, Tim, talk to me. What's goin' on?"

"It's...it's Tony," he replied wetly.

Something in Gibbs' chest burst. He pulled out of Tim's embrace just enough to look him in the eyes. "You found him?"

"W-what?" Tim's brows pinched in confusion. "Y-you knew we were... Wait, no. No that's-" he pulled away the rest of the way and swiped at his eyes as he made his way to the living room. "That's not what I meant, Gibbs." Tim plopped down onto the edge of the couch and wiped his hands over his face one more time as Gibbs sat in the chair across from him.

"You're not makin' much sense, Tim."

"I know. I didn't know what this was either, but I do now."

"Didn't know what what was?"

"This," he said gesturing to his face. "This...emotional vomit...thing that's been happening to me these past few weeks. I get hit with these overwhelming bouts of...emptiness, depression, loneliness...anger I think. And I thought I was just frustrated and missing Tony, and I do miss him, but this...this isn't all me, Gibbs."

Gibbs squinted in thought for a moment, his eyes shifting in the air between them. "You think..."

"I think it's Tony," he finished for him. "I've been having dreams that I couldn't understand until tonight. I think I'm dreaming what Tony's doing, wherever he is. And I think he's losing it over there."

Gibbs clamped his eyes shut, pressing rough circles in his forehead with his fingertips. This was a bit much to take in. It had been years since Tony and Tim had the weird psychic connection that had happened after Tony had used his ability to heal him. No signs of the Contingency effects had shown up at all since a little over a week after Tim's rescue from the hot car on the rooftop. They'd all just assumed that whatever it was, was gone.

"How?" Gibbs asked, laying his hand down on the arm rest.

"I know we thought this link was gone, but...what if it was just dormant? Like it's back because he needs help?"

"You sure about this?"

"No. I mean...Either it's him, or I'm losing my mind and need to be committed somewhere."

Gibbs exhaled and sat forward in the chair. "If this is Tony and he does need help, Fornell doesn't know about it, and we've got no idea where to look for him."

"I think I know where he is..."

*~.~*

"Okay, guys," Bishop said from her seat at the table aboard the jet, once again being loaned by the BAU, whose agents, Dr. Reid and Agent Prentice, were also tagging along to help out. "What is it we're doing now? Because all I've been told is to grab my gear and get on this jet. Where are we going, why are we going, and why all the secrecy? Does this have something to do with Tony?"

"Well you've got that part figured," Gibbs said.

"So we're going to Tony. Why?"

"He's in trouble."

"How do you even know this? Fornell hasn't given us any leeway with the undercover operation. We aren't allowed to communicate with him. Did Fornell call you in?"

"Doubt he knows we're even coming," Gibbs replied. "Hasn't answered my calls."

"And because of the nature of their mission, there is no GPS to track," McGee added.

"If there's no GPS to track, how do you even know where to go?" Bishop asked.

"It's uhh... It's complicated," Tim told her.

"We got a message," Gibbs supplied. "It was vague, but McGee decoded it."

"So Tony contacted you?"

"Yeah," Tim replied, knowing that technically he had, and that wasn't a lie. "In a way, yeah."

"I don't understand," Bishop said, shaking her head.

"Look, this is sensitive information that...well, in all honesty we didn't think we would ever need to divulge," Tim said. "But it looks like we might have to." He glanced to Gibbs, who glanced over at the two BAU agents who had been quietly observing the interaction.

"Yeah. Maybe it's time we tell her," Gibbs said. "You wanna do the honors?" he asked Tim.

Tim shrugged. "It's a long story, so...I need you to keep an open mind and trust what I'm telling you. I know you can keep a secret. There's only a handful of people who know about this..." Tim told her the story. He'd started by asking her if she'd remembered the tanker incident some years back with the unidentified agent who was victim to the spill, and ended with the rescue on the rooftop of the car lot, and how there'd been no sign of abilities since. She'd stayed silent for it, mostly. Her eyes danced about in the air between them as he'd explained, her brain analyzing every piece of information given.

"I started getting these visions in my head," Tim continued, "And it's why we're going where we're going. At first it was just...like an emotional thing, but now...he's hurt and in danger, and Fornell isn't responding."

"Not even to us," Agent Prentice chimed in.

Ellie glanced over at the BAU agents and back to Gibbs. "So _they_ know about all of this?"

"They're part of the team that helped us bring in Gideon."

"And everyone...believes all of this," she said, more a statement than a question.

"Does that mean you don't?" Tim asked, a brow raised.

Ellie glanced back and forth between him and Gibbs. "If it was anyone else telling me this, I wouldn't. But I trust you. If what you're saying is true, have you at least taken advantage of having Gideon in your custody? His DNA should be studied at least. Who knows what kind of information can be pulled from it..."

"It's been done," Tim told her. "It's being done still."

"Your lab?" she surmised.

"Every variable it can come up with, it's testing for, in addition to attempts to find a cure...or well...a treatment at least. Originally I started that for Tony's sake. We kept it running though."

"It's been running for years and hasn't made any progress?"

"The compound is unknown. We don't think it's of...earthly origin. If Dr. Reid's theory is correct, this substance, whatever it is, came here with an asteroid."

"Uh...so this is like...alien stuff," Bishop said in disbelief. "Science fiction. Or I guess...science nonfiction. This is so many levels of strange." She sat there for a moment looking down at the table surface. "But...it's also kinda...exciting," she said with raised brows when she looked back up at her teammates. "Right? I mean...how _cool_ is this?"

Tim and Gibbs shared an amused glance before Gibbs turned back to her with a more serious expression. "It's not cool until we get Tony out of this," he told her. "I just hope we're not too late..."

*~.~*

Earlier...

"...you know as well as I do, he needs to stay in his cover. He can't be a man with nothing to lose if he's got you checkin' in on 'im." Fornell ran a hand down his face as he attempted to reason with the bear on the other line.

" _I want this done. You get this done with, you hear me? Finish the damn case!"_ And that was where Jethro had ended the call. Tobias rolled his eyes as he set his phone down on the small counter in front of the surveillance equipment where he sat in the back of the small, disguised van. He wanted to be done with this case as much as Gibbs wanted him to be, but these nuts were hard to crack. Getting into the operation was one thing, but getting in deep enough to take everything down? Well that was proving to take a lot more time. Not because Tony wasn't capable, mind you, but the higher-ups in the group were very cautious. As they should be, he supposed, but that wasn't doing him any favors.

He sighed and sat forward in his chair, tapping a few buttons on the keyboard in front of him, switching camera feed to the inside of Tony's alias's apartment. The view of the couch showed the lights from the television, not to mention the fact that no one was on the couch at the moment. "What're you in the bathroom or somethin'?" he asked out loud, though he'd need to text the kid to actually get that message across. He picked up his phone, but before he could open a text, someone grabbed him from behind, a cold, damp cloth pressed over his nose and mouth. He struggled. Hell, he'd been trained for this kind of situation. But he'd been caught so off guard, he didn't have a chance to implement that training before his world became dark...

 **tbc...**


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: Got my laptop back long enough to post this. I wrote it all on my cellphone and holy balls I don't recommend it LOL. I'm gonna try to get more done while I've got the chance, but do continue to bear with me!**

*~.~*

His head was killing him. It was dark, but he figured out quickly enough that that was because his eyes were closed. Why was it so hard to open them? He couldn't bring his arms in front of them. They were tied at the wrist, he could feel, and the rope was so tight it was cutting into his skin. His back was up against something cold and hard; a pole, he assumed.

He could hear voices in the distance growing closer, scuffing of shoes on pavement like someone was stumbling along, and a couple more walking heavily. He tried again to open his eyes and this time got them to crack open enough for the light to cut like a knife through his skull. He squeezed them shut again, groaning through the wave of nausea that followed.

"Aww what's the matter, Anthony DiNozzo Jr?" the familiar voice sounded above him; one of the henchmen to the leader Tony had been undercover investigating. He was one of the four guys he'd gotten pretty close to while integrating into their system.

Obviously he'd figured Tony out. "You didn't think I was stupid, did you? That I wouldn't find out?"

Here's where Tony could shine, though. He summoned up all of his strength, trying to push down the pain and concentrate on attempting to save his own ass. "My name is Tony," he said with his infamous grin taking its place on his face. "Tony Haas. You know that, Johnny. Could you," he began laughing. "Could you imagine if I was a Junior? I never even knew my father, let alone shared his name. I told you, man, I took my mom's name."

"It was a nice cover, kid, I'll give ya that. But like I said, I'm not stupid."

"What are you even talking about, man? How did I get here and who the hell is feeding you this load of bullshit?"

"Quit while you're ahead, Tone. I know everything. And I've got your piece of crap partner." The man motioned to someone in the shadows behind him, and Tony watched two men come forward, Fornell between them. They shoved him to his knees, and Fornell lifted his eyes apologetically at Tony.

 _Well fuck._

"Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo. Yeah we got our own set of hackers. Why do you think they can't get to us?" Tony didn't reply. His instinctive reaction would be to say something derogatory, but he was finding it difficult to think of anything at the moment. They were there alone. No one knew where they were. No one would even know they were gone... "It's too bad, Tone. I was starting to really like you. I didn't wanna believe Andy when he said what he found out. But then we find this guy, and it's pretty hard to ignore the facts."

"Johnny, look," Tony began, but Johnny wasn't in the mood to hear more lies.

"It really breaks my heart," he said, motioning to his goons to stand Fornell up.

"I'm sorry, Johnny," Tony said, his nerves suddenly on fire.

"Nah. Not you, kid. It breaks my heart that I gotta kill an old man."

"No no, now wait!"

"So to make myself feel a little better, I'm gonna give 'im a head start."

"Johnny, listen to me," Tony tried to reason with him. "You don't have to do this. We have nothing on you! You haven't done anything wrong here yet!"

He didn't listen. Instead he watched the FBI agent until Fornell dared to attempt to get away. The sound of the gun being fired was both terrifying and deafening. The building they were in, Tony realized, was the old hanger Johnny often used to do interrogations, and the echo off of all the empty space made it hurt all the worse.

It was all so fast. The gun shot, then Fornell dropping lifeless to the pavement. The moonlight coming through the door lightened his bloodied face.

"Nooo!"

*~.~*

"McGee!" Ellie had a hold of Tim's shoulder and arm, concern washing her face at the display. They'd just been talking when Tim had curled in on himself in his seat, his hands balling into fists at his temples as he made a pained noise. Gibbs looked over from his seat, recognizing the familiar behavior Tony used to show with his visions. He stood and went to his agent.

"Talk to me, Tim," Gibbs said as he knelt in front of the younger agent, placing his hand on Tim's other shoulder. "What is it?"

"We need to get there," he replied in a pained voice. He brought his head up to look at his boss. His eyes were red. Not quite as awful as when it happened to Tony, but enough for Gibbs to get a terrible feeling in his gut. "Whatever's happening...it's bad..."

"We've been cleared to land," Prentiss told them. "We'll touch down right where your vision lead us."

*~.~*

"Go ahead and untie 'im," Johnny told his goons. Tony could feel his entire body shaking both in anger and fear. He'd messed up. They'd figured him out and now Fornell was dead, and he would soon be following.

"So what now?" Tony asked, resigned now with acceptance of his fate. "Gonna give me a head start too? Try to make yourself feel better about murdering me?" A noise that had started out a distant whir had become a lot louder and closer. Johnny motioned for his goons to go check it out.

"You made me care about you, ya damn Fed bastard," Johnny replied calmly. "And that's a real shame. I thought you were gonna be a great asset to the team. Turns out you were here to destroy it. What do you honestly think I should do, huh? Just...let you go? You said you had nothing on me, but you just witnessed me murder a Federal agent. You leave here, I'll be targeted, and the boss will have me killed before your people ever had a chance to catch me."

"Or you come with me," Tony offered. "You help us get the rest of them and you'll be protected," he attempted to bargain for his life.

"You know...before I found out you were a traitor, I might've taken you up on an offer like that. Like if you'd told me before..." Johnny paused in his statement. "I would've been game to get out. Hell, nobody gets into this kinda life in purpose. But it's too late, Tone. Now it's kill or be killed. All I can do is give you a running start."

"Well," Tony replied, holding out his newly free arms. "That's too bad, 'cause you don't get to feel better about this, John. You're gonna have to shoot me right here. Right in front of you." Tony closed his eyes for a moment, thinking of his team back home. Thinking of what Gibbs might think of his surrender. Thinking of how he'd take the news about Tobias...

"You think I can't?" Johnny asked.

"Johnny!" one of the goons yelled into the building over the loud engine sound outside. "There's a plane landing right here! We need to get out now!"

"Now or never, man," Tony drew John's attention back to him.

"We gotta go now!" the goon yelled, then took off.

"I will be back to finish this!" Johnny yelled at Tony, then took off out the door.

For a long moment, Tony stood there waiting for him to come back. He barely registered the sound of the landing jet outside. After a moment, he started into action, searching pointlessly for a phone to call for help. Maybe the pilot could help... He trudged forward, the ache in his head renewing as he got closer to the door. The nausea hit him again. He paused in the doorway looking tearfully at the fallen agent on the ground beneath him before stepping around him to get outside...

*~.~*

"That's it right there!" Tim yelled, pointing toward the doorway on the side of the hanger as they deboarded the jet and stood on the pavement. They could see the faint light coming from the open door. They could see a body lying in its threshold. The team drew their weapons and began a quick approach toward the opening.

"Tony!" Gibbs spotted him slipping out the doorway. Tony winced but looked up at the voice.

"Gibbs?" he said in disbelief. "How...?"

"Are you okay?" he asked, holstering his gun before grabbing the agent's arms in attempt to get a look at him. Tony's eyes darted around at the others as they went to check the hanger.

"They're gone," he told them, then looked to his boss. "Gibbs, I'm so sorry," he said wetly. Gibbs narrowed his eyes at him before the figure on the floor caught his attention.

"Tobias?" he said to no one in particular. Tim was kneeling beside him checking for a pulse.

"He's alive!" Tim said, surprised. "Ellie, call for an ambulance!"

Gibbs looked back at Tony, who was looking like he was in some state of shock. "What happened, Tony?"

Tony met his eyes again. "They found me out," he replied. "They shot Fornell and they were gonna shoot me, but you...they ran off."

Gibbs took one hand off Tony's arm and examined the bloody gash on the younger man's temple. "You hurt anywhere else?"

Tony shook his head, and something changed in his eyes then, as though just coming to grips with the reality in front of him. "I'm real glad to see you," he said, hardly able to contain the tears building in his eyes.

Gibbs pulled him into an embrace. "Damn good to see you too, DiNozzo," he said, scruffing the back of Tony's head.

"How did you find us?" he asked pulling away.

"McGee," he replied, glancing at the other agent as he stood.

"Prentiss has the local Leo's on the way here," Tim told Gibbs before looking to Tony. "Man am I glad to see you," he smiled as he held out his hand to him.

"Aw, c'mere, probie," Tony said pulling him into a hug. "I'm glad that big brain of yours could track me down. I'd be dead if you hadn't shown up when you did." He pulled away. "How exactly did you do that?"

"The ambulance is on its way. Should be here in two minutes," Bishop said. Then she smiled at Tony. "I'm glad you're okay," she said, still processing the fact that Tim's visions were real and everything she'd been told was not some big joke. Tony could tell she was holding something back, but before he could think about it, he felt something white hot burn through his head.

Gibbs flinched as something sprayed his face. He'd seen a flash out the corner of his eye, and he looked over, seeing the man with his gun pointed at Tony. He could see the others with their guns drawn, returning fire, but when he looked to Tony's now blank eyes and realized he was about to crumble to the ground, he caught him under his arms before he could.

The sudden dead weight dropped him to his knees, Tony falling with him.

"Tony?" he held the man's face in his hands now, realizing that the man's head was bloody and dripping down the side of his face. "No..." His voice barely made a sound, and he pulled Tony's body back into an embrace, unable to help tears from escaping him. "I'm so sorry."

"We got him, Gibbs-" Bishop's statement cut short at the sight before her. "Oh my God... Is..." and then she saw Tim. "McGee! Oh God was he shot too?!" she asked as she rushed to kneel beside him. Gibbs hadn't seen the other man go down. But Tim was lying beside them, still and pale and Gibbs didn't think he could handle any more...

"He's not hit!" she said. "He's unconscious but his heart is beating. What happened?"

Gibbs didn't have an answer for her. He couldn't think, not with his agent dead in his arms. As he heard the sirens getting closer, he gently laid Tony down on the pavement, then ran his fingers down over the agent's lids to close them...

*~.~*

Gibbs stood in the hallway outside of the morgue of the hospital, back against the wall as a thousand thoughts rolled around in his head. Too many for him to actually make sense of, except for the one huge, terrible one where Tony was dead in a body bag in one of the fridge drawers just beyond the door he was staring at.

They'd gotten there in time to save him, and lost him anyway. It wasn't fair. Nothing about the lives of his team had ever been fair. Not really. The things they'd been through, and the ones they'd lost. This family these people had become, torn away piece by piece. If he believed in curses, he could maybe think that he was just that.

But his family was in trouble right now. Both Tobias and McGee were keeping the neurology department swamped at the moment. Tobias was in surgery. Last Gibbs had heard, when Bishop had come down to give him an update, was that the bullet had cracked his skull but hadn't reached his brain. They were putting in a stent until the swelling could go down, but the prognosis was looking good so far.

McGee was being taken back for a CT and a possible MRI. That was one of the thoughts rolling around Gibbs' head as well. The sudden unconsciousness of the younger agent worried the hell out of him. Somehow, he'd been getting signals from Tony again, and it was obvious that his current state was a result of Tony's sudden demise... But what did that mean for Tim now?

God what did this mean for any of them? The thought of breaking all of this news to Abby, Ducky... Palmer. Hell, he'd need to track down Senior. Fuck... He wasn't ready for this. He would never be ready for this...

*~.~*

"JJ has arranged for us to be able to bring everyone back with us in the morning," Reid told Gibbs when he'd made his way back up to the intake floor. "That's assuming Agent Fornell doesn't take a turn overnight."

"Which I'm sure won't happen," Prentiss interjected. "The swelling is already starting to respond to the medication and the doc said the stent won't be an issue flying."

"Everyone?" Gibbs asked.

Reid knew what he was asking. "Everyone, Agent Gibbs. We can buckle him onto the couch. The jet won't accommodate a casket..." He swallowed and looked down.

Gibbs' heart had twinged at the thought of bringing Tony home in a body bag, but he saw the saddened look on the agent's face before him and remembered that he was in no way alone in the heartbreak.

He nodded to the young man and turned to Ellie.

"McGee?" he asked.

"Still unconscious," she replied. "But the scans didn't show any damage. They're waiting for toxicology to come back, but they think he's not in any immediate danger."

"Where is he?"

Bishop gestured with her head for him to follow her as she lead him up the hall. "The nurses understand our situation," she told him. "They won't give you a hard time about being in there." She stopped in front of the room Tim was in.

"You doing okay, Bishop?" he asked turning to her.

"I'm uh...still processing everything," she said as she looked down a bit. "I still can't wrap my head around..." she couldn't complete the sentence, but Gibbs saw her eyes as they became wet. "I didn't give him a hug," she said, a small smile trying to cut through her tears. "I was still wrapping my head around it all and I guess part of me was scared. I should've hugged him and told him how much we missed him, and now it's too late..." Her tears took over then, and Gibbs pulled her to him. He knew she'd been holding it all in for his sake, and now that they weren't terrified of losing more of their people, it had nowhere to hide anymore...

 **tbc...**


	3. Chapter 3

Gibbs stood beside McGee's hospital bed. If he didn't know any better, he'd think the kid was just sleeping. In a way he supposed he was, but the doctors didn't know the real story. They didn't know that Tim had been abruptly unplugged from his partner, and that it had probably caused some kind of damage that their scans wouldn't be able to detect.

He put a hand on Tim's forehead, brushing his hair from his face. His hair had grown in a bit lately. Since Tony had left for the undercover op. It was almost as long as when he'd first joined the MCRT all those years ago. Gibbs smiled with the memory, remembering the way he and Tony would rip into each other. He knew Tony liked him from the start. That's the way he showed it.

He closed his eyes, a frown taking place of the smile that had been there just moments earlier. There would be no more of that, now. Their class clown was gone. They'd already been sorely missing it before all of this, and now it was lost entirely.

Gibbs took a breath and opened his eyes. He leaned down closer to McGee. "You need to come out of this, Tim. We need you here, ya hear me? You don't get to stay in there forever..."

When he pulled away again, Tim's eyes were open and staring ahead at the ceiling. Gibbs wasn't sure he was actually awake, the suddenness of it a bit shocking. "Tim?" he said as he placed a hand on the man's shoulder, eyes narrowing in observation. Tim shot up to sit, eyes still ahead of him nowhere in particular, and after a moment, he began to weep.

Still shocked, Gibbs took a moment to realize what was happening. His agent was likely already aware that Tony was gone. He already knew, though he'd not been conscious for it. The sight of his mourning form tore something inside Gibbs, and he sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled Tim to him tightly.

"I know, Tim. I know..."

*~.~*

The first half of the flight home had been morbid and silent. Each of them taking turns staring at the body bag buckled onto the couch, and McGee who sat across from it, like he was guarding it from further harm. His face was blank, and it had them all on edge, worried about the man's state of mind.

Fornell was asleep in one of the seats, his wrapped head resting on a pillow against the window. The brief amount of time he'd been conscious, he'd spent apologizing to Gibbs, being on the verge of tears in his drug-fueled state. Gibbs had been relieved when he'd fallen asleep so quickly after boarding.

"Is he gonna be okay, Gibbs?" Ellie asked quietly where she sat across from him. Prentiss was beside her and Reid beside Gibbs. Gibbs couldn't answer, though. He didn't have one to give.

"I think he's still in shock," Reid said as quietly. "Between the weeks leading up to this, the sudden realization that he was getting signals from Tony, and this mission...ending in the worst way possible..."

"It could definitely have been worse," Emily chimed in.

"It could definitely have been better," Gibbs replied. Prentiss nodded. "I don't know what's going on in McGee's head right now. Hasn't said a word since he woke up. That's why we need to get him in to be seen when we get Fornell to Bethesda."

"We've already arranged for your transportation from the airport," Reid told him. "An ambulance will take Agent Fornell. You could follow with Agent McGee."

Gibbs hadn't looked away from Tim. So when he saw the slight change in his expression, he was alert and ready. "Tim?" he said as the younger man pushed up out of his seat and stepped into the aisle facing Tony. Tim glanced to Gibbs with a look of apprehension on his face, but then back down at the body bag. He reached out to its zipper and began pulling it down. Gibbs stood. "McGee," he warned, but Tim continued to unzip the bag. Gibbs walked the few steps it took to reach him and placed a hand on the younger man's shoulder, squeezing a bit to get his attention. But Tim pulled open the bag and looked at Tony. Gibbs stood beside him, ready to comfort him if need be. Tim had been the only one who hadn't seen Tony's body yet. Maybe he was just trying to get some closure or something.

Tim's face turned to Gibbs again, this time with slightly widened eyes, before looking back down. He reached his hand down to Tony's face, then to his neck.

"He's warm," Tim said. It was the first thing he'd said since waking up, and it took Gibbs by surprise. "He has a pulse. It's weak but it's there!"

Gibbs figured maybe Tim was having a mental break. He pushed him carefully out of the way and put his own hand on Tony's cheek. He did feel warm. He shouldn't. He'd been in a cold drawer overnight. A spark akin to hope dared to bloom in his chest as he reached for Tony's carotid artery...and he felt the slow but steady beat against his finger tips.

Gibbs' chest filled with warmth, the hair on the back of his neck-really his entire body-stood up as though he were near electricity. His heart pounding, he looked back at McGee, hoping this wasn't a dream. The others were now standing around them, curious eyes wide in anticipation.

"Agent Gibbs?" Reid questioned when the older man seemed speechless.

"He's got a pulse," Gibbs replied quietly. He watched McGee's face light up with a wide smile, eyes wet with relief and hope, and Gibbs was feeling the same way but couldn't let himself fully accept it just yet.

"He was pronounced dead at the scene," Bishop said in disbelief. "They had him in cold storage overnight..."

"Agent McGee's theory must've been correct," Reid said. "The Contingency abilities must've been lying dormant all these years. Or perhaps needed a reboot of sorts."

"He was communicating with Tim," Prentiss countered.

"Unknowingly," Reid replied. "What he was sending were more like signals. Emotions, mostly. But he wasn't doing it purposely. Even Tim didn't know what was happening at first."

"He's right," Tim chimed in. "It wasn't anything like it was before. It used to be as if we had a built in communications device in our heads. I never got communications from him this time. Just feelings and flashes of images. Like whatever was left of Contingency detected his distress and decided it needed to assist in preserving his life."

"More likely its own," Reid said. "By keeping Tony alive, Contingency can continue its existence..."

"That implies that Contingency has intelligence," Bishop said. "Like way beyond, say, a virus."

"That would be a fair comparison actually," Reid replied.

They looked back over at Gibbs and McGee, realizing they'd been removing the body bag from the agent and covering him with a blanket up to his chin. Gibbs was tucking it around Tony's body in attempt to help him warm up further. He rolled up an extra sweatshirt from his go bag to make a pillow, and positioned it carefully under Tony's head.

When they were through, they stood. Gibbs' hands cupped over his nose and mouth for a long moment before rubbing them down to his cheeks and settling them back at his sides. He turned to Tim whose eyes were still shining as he looked to his boss.

"You saved him," Gibbs told him.

Tim's brows furrowed. "I..."

Gibbs took a step forward toward him. "You got us out here. If we hadn't been there to take him home, he'd have revived there in that morgue and you _know_ what would've ended up happening to him."

Of course, Gibbs was right. Tony would've become the thing he terrified almost as much as losing his team; a science experiment. A lab rat, tortured and studied for the rest of time.

Tim found himself pulled into a rough hug.

*~.~*

Ducky and Palmer had brought the van to the jet once it had landed. They loaded Tony into it and brought him directly to Gibbs' house, while an ambulance took Fornell to Bethesda for observation.

The MCRT had given their thanks and said their goodbyes to the BAU team members that had helped them out, and Vance had come to pick up his agents to take them home. Ellie was dropped off first. McGee insisted on going home with Gibbs to help watch over Tony. Gibbs didn't refuse him.

Vance got the sit-rep on the ride there. He was mostly silent for it, and Gibbs couldn't blame him. It was a lot to process. When they pulled into the driveway, he did finally speak. "Need help with anything?"

"We've got it," Gibbs replied as he readied to open his door

"Well is there anything I _can_ do?" the direction asked.

"You can do what you did last time; give us some time."

"What about Bishop?"

"She's still trying to wrap her head around all of this. Might do her some good to have a distraction. I'll have her go over cold cases until we get back. The piles of information are like crack for her. Just be sure to throw her chips now and then." He smirked at the director and then climbed out to follow McGee who was now walking up to the house.

"You take care," Vance called after them. "Both of you. Keep me in the loop about his progress, Jethro." Gibbs simply nodded, then turned to open the door for Tim.

It was like deja vu from years ago, seeing Tony in the guest bed, Ducky sitting in vigil beside it as he took the man's vitals. Tim was scrambling to find something, leaving Gibbs with the older man for the moment. He stood there and looked over Tony again. The morgue staff had left him in his clothing; a bloodied tee shirt and sweatpants that he'd likely been in for bed before being snatched up. He realized, at that point, that McGee was probably looking for something clean they could change him into.

Then he looked down at himself and realized that he was kind of in the same boat, clothes-wise. It was then that he recalled being in the restroom at the hospital, washing the blood from his face. Throwing up the coffee he'd had on the jet into the sink at the memory of a similar spattering on Tony's face when Kate had been shot down in front of them. Gibbs had been the one to wash it off the agent's skin, finding Tony in a state of shock in the NCIS bathroom then.

He remembered being so sick to his stomach at the cruel coincidence...

"Okay, I found a heating pad if that helps, and an extra blanket in the basement," Tim said as he came back into the room. "And I think there's still some of Tony's spare clothes here," he continued as he walked to the dresser, placing the blanket and pad on top before opening the first drawer, then the second. "At least a clean shirt," he said as he pulled one out. It was similar to the one he had on now, Tim noted. "I'm gonna grab the basin that's still under the sink, and some washcloths. We can try and clean up the..." He gestured to the side of his own head in reference to Tony's gunshot wound, paused a moment while he looked at Tony, then left the room once more.

Gibbs felt a swelling of pride for the man. He sat down on the edge of the bed beside Tony and began lifting up the bloody tee shirt. It was dry now, but that didn't stop his recollection of the night before.

Carefully, he removed the shirt, trying not to grimace as it stuck in some places, and threw it into the trash bin beside the bed just in time for McGee to walk in with the basin half filled with warm water and cloths. He reached out and took it from him, laying it on the nightstand before soaking a washcloth and squeezing it out. He gently scrubbed the dried blood from Tony's torso and remembered how the blood had oozed from his head down between the two of them when he'd held him there.

"You okay, boss?" Tim asked, noticing the slight shaking of his hand.

Gibbs shrugged. "I should be. I will be. How about you?"

"I'm just so relieved to know he's alive, I can't seem to shake this nervous energy. I'm uh...I'm gonna grab a towel so we can uh..." He hurried back out of the room, not needing to finish the sentence, and returned with a bath towel as Gibbs started on Tony's hair. It was just the one side that was matted with dried blood, so moving him wasn't necessary.

Ducky had been sitting quietly, watching Gibbs work. He knew this wasn't the time to speak his mind entirely. He simply needed to report what he knew the agent would need to hear. "Tony's heart rate and breathing are improving with the passing time," he began. "I would need more equipment to give you an idea as far as brain activity goes, but my guess is that if he's come back from death, all of him should repair eventually.

"Thanks, Duck," he replied as he finished getting most of the blood out of Tony's hair. Tony would have to shower to get the rest out. After patting him dry with the towel Tim had come back with, they both carefully got him into the clean shirt, and McGee grabbed the blanket to drape over his body.

"How long do you think it'll take this time?" Tim asked.

Gibbs looked up at him from where he now sat back in the chair. "No telling," he said, shaking his head. "We've never lost him all the way like that. Longest he was ever unconscious after healing was twenty-four hours. When he was shot up by Gideon in that warehouse."

"Yeah." Tim remembered all too well. He sank down onto the edge of the bed and looked at Tony for a long moment before looking back at Gibbs. "What if..." His question dropped off, but Gibbs knew what he was going to ask. Hell, he was thinking it too.

"We'll deal with it when he's better," Gibbs replied. "Right now, the important thing is that we've got him back. He's alive, and he's got all of us watching out for him." Tim nodded in agreement, but it hadn't made him any less worried about Tony's memories not being intact. There was really no telling how much he'd be affected by the gunshot to the brain. What it did to Gideon was to, after while, cause him to go mad. What if Tony didn't remember them?

He quickly pushed the thought out of his head. He needed to be patient. Wait and see. And he really needed to order something for dinner because neither of them had eaten, and Gibbs would probably continue not doing so unless Tim put it right in front of him.

"Hey, Ducky, you hungry?"

*~.~*

Gibbs woke up to a grumbling stomach. He could smell something cooking, and he heard Ducky and McGee talking softly. He slipped out of bed and down the stairs, poking his head into the guest room to see Tony still sleeping, before heading out to the others.

"Good morning, Jethro," Ducky greeted as he poured a cup of coffee for him. "We heard you come down the stairs, so I took the liberty," he said as he handed the cup to him. "Would you care for eggs and toast? That's all I was able to find."

"Sounds great, Duck," he replied before taking a seat beside Tim. "You two sleep okay?"

"The chair in there is great for sleepovers," Tim said with a slight grin.

"And as you well know, the couch is probably the most comfortable thing in the house," Ducky said as he placed a plate of food in front of Gibbs. "Mr. Palmer is on the way to pick me up so that we can head into the office. You'll call me if you need anything?"

"I shouldn't need anything, but yeah, of course."

"Let's hope not then. I hope your day is pleasantly uneventful. I'll leave the equipment here so Timothy can check on Tony's vitals. There's a notebook on the side table where you can jot down the numbers," he told Tim. "If anything shows up as a decline, call me straight away."

"I'll do that," Tim told him.

"Very well then. I'll see you both later."

"Have a good day, Ducky," Tim said.

"Tell Abby I'll call her when there's news. I'm sure she's pried what she could from Ellie already," Gibbs said. Ducky grinned, then headed out the door to the van as Jimmy pulled up.

The two men ate in companionable silence. "Need more coffee?" Tim asked after a while.

"The answer is always yes."

Tim let out a slight laugh as he stood and made his way to the pot.

"Gibbs?" Tony's voice sounded from the doorway, and both men spun around to see him standing there...

 **tbc...**


	4. Chapter 4

**AN: I've got a laptop to write on now- It needs a replacement keyboard. I'm using a regular one right now which is really awkward and delays my typing speed like whoa. I just need to somehow summon $35 to appear magically in my account so I can order it and install.  
Anyway, here ya go! **

***~.~***

"Is it really you or am I dreaming?" Tony asked, his eyes shimmering with unshed tears. "McGee?"

"Tony, you're awake," Tim said, concern in his voice as Gibbs stood from the table and took the few steps to get to his SFA.

"We weren't sure how long it'd take you to wake up this time. Real glad you didn't take too long," Gibbs said before pulling him into an embrace. He felt Tony's arms grab around him fiercely, a breath shakily escaping.

"God am I glad to see you guys. I've missed the hell outta you." His eyes squeezed shut and Tim watched tears stream from them. "Fornell finally send me back? I can't really remember..."

Gibbs pulled away, keeping him at arms length as he appraised him. "What's the last thing you _do_ remember?"

"Uhhh..." Tony looked at him strangely. "Getting ready for bed." His eyes darted somewhere in front of him in thought then. "I think someone...stuck me in the neck," he said as he rubbed the side of his neck absentmindedly.

"C'mon," Gibbs said as he led Tony to sit where he had previously been. "You hungry?"

"Starving."

"Here," he said, sliding his plate to him.

"Thanks," he replied, immediately digging in.

"Is there more, Tim?"

"Sure, boss. I'll make more toast too." He stood and put two slices of bread in the toaster, then picked up the frying pan to scoop more eggs onto Tony's plate. He stood there and watched him eat for a moment. A thought occurred to him and he went to the fridge, got out the half gallon of milk, stuck the pan in the sink and grabbed a clean glass. The toast popped, so McGee abandoned the glass for a moment to fix that, then brought it and the milk to Tony.

"Hey thanks, man," Tony said around a mouthful of food.

Tim took a seat beside him, Gibbs on the other side, observing. "So," Tim began, "You remember being undercover, then being stuck with something," he verified.

"Pretty sure it was a needle," Tony replied.

"Anything after that?"

"Waking up here. What'd you guys come rescue me from the endless torture Fornell called an apartment? Because don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled to be back and elated that all that's over with, but I'm a little hazy on why exactly it's all over."

"You were kidnapped," Gibbs said. "John Townsend ring a bell?"

"Johnny? Yeah he was my lead mark."

"He shot you and Fornell."

Tony dropped his fork to the plate and looked back and forth between Tim and Gibbs. "Is he okay?"

"He was grazed. He's at Bethesda for observation. You weren't so lucky. At least...not at first."

"That bastard killed you," Tim chimed in. "Shot you in the head. You were dead, Tony. In cold storage for half a day almost."

Tony would've been more shaken if he wasn't so concerned by the haunted look in McGee's eyes. "Wait... What?" He began looking himself over. "I may have missed something here..."

"Your ability to heal is back," Gibbs told him. "We were on our way back home with you in a body bag, dead. Then suddenly your heart started up."

Tony was silent for a couple of minutes, his eyes focusing on the table top as he thought everything over. "How did you even find us?" he asked when he finally spoke again.

Gibbs glanced to McGee, then pulled his ringing phone from his pocket, stood from the table and answered the call in the living room.

"You told me," Tim replied to his question.

"Uhhh what does that mean exactly?"

"I don't think you knew it, but you were sending signals for weeks."

"Signals..?"

"I was feeling your emotions. Man, I thought I was losing my mind. Coupled with the fact that we were missing you so damn much, I swear I would've cracked if I hadn't figured it out." Tony said nothing, but his gaze had fallen back on the table as he absorbed the words. "Then I was getting visions of that place they took you to. It's how we got to you in time to get Townsend. Unfortunately not before he got you in the temple..."

Tony looked at him again. "He shot me in the head... No wonder there's time missing in there."

"When he shot you it did something to me," Tim continued. Tony immediately met his eyes again. "I was out cold a few hours. Couldn't even speak after that. There was something...just... I don't know how to explain it."

"Like something got torn out," Tony surmised.

"Yeah. But then when your heart started beating, I could feel it. I mean before I opened up that body bag I just knew. I knew you were back somehow."

Gibbs had finished his call and was merely standing in the doorway listening in on the conversation. He had figured Tim had felt something that had made him want to open that body bag, but hearing him say it made it real. They were still connected by whatever force Tony had used to save him.

"It's a little strange that we still have that," Tony said. "I don't mean that it's bad, I just mean... When you shot Gideon, he was absolutely out of my head for good. Although..."

"He's been sleeping since then," Tim finished for him.

"This is so weird," Tony said with a laugh as he pushed up nervously from the table. "I can't believe after all this time, this stuff is still inside me."

"We were surprised too... But the whole visions thing kinda hinted at it."

"I wonder if..." Tony didn't bother to finish his statement, but rather turned to his seat and held his arm out toward his mostly empty plate. Immediately it rose from the table. "Oh my God." He moved it all the way to the sink. Then he went back for Gibbs' plate and did the same. "This is... This is...exciting and terrifying and I'm not sure how to feel right now." He turned back to the table and held both hands out, levitating the chairs, Tim in one of them.

"Uh.. Uhhhhhhh! Tony?"

"Look at this! Gibbs, are your seeing this?" Tony turned his head and levitated the broom in the corner, then made it sweep. "I'm the freaking Sorcerer's Apprentice!"

"Okay, you might wanna put Tim down before he gets seasick all over my kitchen," Gibbs said. Tony laughed, but obliged and carefully set everything back in its place.

"I... That was...awesome!" he said with a huge grin. Then blood poured from his nose. Tim hurriedly grabbed a rag and handed it to him.

"Yeah it's been a while since you used those," he said. "Baby steps, show off."

Tony laughed as he held the cloth to his nose. Then without warning he crumbled to the floor unconscious...

*~.~*

"C'mon, come back to us, Tony." Tony could hear Gibbs talking beside him, and he tried to open his eyes, but the current pain in his head was making that super difficult. He groaned instead, giving them a sign that he was conscious. "That's it. Just gotta open your eyes."

"I know your head's killing you," Tim said. "If you can sit up, I've got a glass of milk here with your name on it." Without opening his eyes, Tony reached out on either side of him, seeking assistance. Gibbs pulled him up a bit and slid a knee behind Tony's back so he could lean back on it. "Here ya go, Tony. Just let me hold it, and you drink." Tim put a hand behind Tony's head and led the glass to Tony's lips. Tony drank from it, slowly at first, and then grabbed the glass with his own hand and began guzzling the rest down.

'Ahh...does a body good," Tony said with a grin as he was now able to open his eyes. "Thanks, guys," he said as he handed the glass back to Tim, glancing between the two of them for a moment before pushing himself up to stand. "Sorry about that. Guess I need some field time with it before I try doing something like that again."

"You start out small," Gibbs demanded. "And no doing it alone."

"Sorry, boss. I was just so surprised at how easy it was. I mean...much easier than before. I feel stronger, but obviously it's not gonna be that simple."

"We need to figure out a way to counteract the reaction," Tim said. "Maybe create a supplement you can take daily that would time-release." It was easy to slide back into Contingency-mode, even after years without having to think much about it besides the constant checking in with Camper. "I can have a meeting with Abby and Ducky about it. Maybe we could figure something out together."

"Well you go do that, McGeeksquad. In fact, force everyone over here after work. I missed the hell outta everyone and I'd kill for a family get together."

*~.~*

The whole group had come by once they knew Tony was awake and okay. They were seated around the table, squished together in some places but not necessarily complaining either. They were just about finished with their meal when Ellie went for a refill.

"Allow me, dear lady," Tony said before Ellie could reach for the pitcher. "I've been practicing all day," he said with a grin. Ellie expected him to simply pour her drink for her. Instead, she watched the pitcher lift off of the table by itself. Her face was unreadable, like almost everyone else except Jimmy and Abby who simply looked excited; Abby tapping her fingers together in a silent clap.

"Say when," Tony said as the pitcher began to tip and pour into her glass. She seemed mesmerized, right up until the glass was on the brink of full, and she shook her head as if to clear it.

"When." The pitcher lowered back down to its original position on the table. As the group gave him a round of applause, Gibbs and McGee watched Tony's face for any sign of impending discomfort, but saw none. "Holy crap, Tony!" Bishop said once her words came back to her. "That's...amazing!"

"If I ever lose my place at NCIS, I know I can always perform at cruises, eh?" he said with a smirk. He felt Gibbs' hand smack the back of his head. "Sorry, boss." It had been far too long since he'd had one of those, and as he gazed over at the older agent, Gibbs' slight grin gave away that he'd felt as nostalgic about it.

"Okay, so about this supplement project," Abby said to Tim. "You know I researched it a bit back when we initially discovered how it helps Tony to recover. I'm theorizing that it has to do with the lactose. The glucose and galactose combination seems to be hyper reactive to the Contingency molecules."

While she, Tim and Ducky discussed the subject along with Jimmy, the others began to clear the table.

"Before you say anything," Tony said as he put a pile of dishes beside the sink. "You said small, and that was small."

"I also said not alone," Gibbs replied.

"I was here the whole time. And I had milk on hand through it all." Tony held up a finger when Gibbs seemed ready to argue about the semantics. "Better to seek forgiveness than ask permission."

Gibbs clamped his mouth shut, turning to the sink in thought as he started the water running. "Fine," he said finally. "You're forgiven. This time. Next time, you come get me."

"Scout's honor," he replied. "As penance, I'll do the dishes."

"I was gonna make you do that anyway," Gibbs said with a smirk.

Ellie smiled at them. "I'll dry!"

"Boss, can I-"

"No."

"You're no fun, Gibbs."

"I didn't say I was entertaining anyone tonight." He grinned and went back out to the table.

"He's a party pooper, that one," Tony said to Bishop. She let out a small laugh before tackling Tony with a huge hug. "Whoa! What's all this for?" he asked, hesitantly returning the hug.

"I just missed you being around," she replied, the pulled away and looked up at him. "I'm really glad you're back."

"Thanks," he said with a grin. "Now multiply that times a thousand and you'll get how glad I am to _be_ back." She smiled back at him, but then Tony's grin faded. His eyes narrowed and he wasn't exactly looking at her anymore. It wasn't until he put a hand over his stomach and made a pain-filled grunting sound that she became worried.

"Tony? Are you sick?"

*~.~*

Gibbs half listened to the conversation between the medical scholars as he stacked up the rest of the things needing to be taken back to the kitchen. He understood some of it, but the bigger words he new to be Latin or something, started sounding like code language, and he opted out. He looked over at McGee when the younger man suddenly stopped talking. His eyes were downcast, moving quickly back and forth as though he were thinking. The pinch in his brows and sudden acceleration in his breathing, however, had Gibbs walking to him.

"Tim?" he asked, a hand on his shoulder.

Tim looked up at him with somewhat bloodshot eyes. "It's Gideon," he said, eyes wide with apprehension.

"What?"

"He's communicating with Tony..."

A plate crashing to the floor had them both looking toward the kitchen before rushing in. "Tony?" Ellie had his face in her hands where they stood. Tony was stock still, arms loosely hanging at his sides as he stood there. The most frightening part, though, was how his eyes were completely white. Or perhaps rolled so far back into his head that they couldn't see them anymore...


	5. Chapter 5

**AN: Editing isn't happening today, folks. Lol**

*~.~*

" _You can't keep me in here forever," Gideon said. "This isn't humane. I need to be let out so that I can continue my research. I must find a way to rid myself of this power, but I can't do it without your help. You must trust me. I know that I've done terrible things, but I believe, truly, if I had help we could find a way."_

 _At first, Tony could see nothing, but the room began to brighten before him, and he found himself standing in the middle of Tim's lab, looking through the glass that separated him from Gideon's prison. He was the way they'd left him years ago._

" _How are you communicating with me?" Tony asked. "You're not even supposed to be conscious."_

" _The mind can do amazing things, Anthony. Amazing and terrible things..."_

" _You weren't supposed to realize you were even there," Tony told him. "It wasn't supposed to be like this."_

" _I wish your plan had worked. I really do. It wasn't a half-bad idea."_

" _What if we could modify it somehow?"_

" _This...life inside of us, Anthony...it finds a way. It's remarkable, but also frustrating, isn't it?"_

" _Like Jurassic Park."_

 _Gideon laughed. "See this is why I like poking around in that head of yours..."_

" _Speaking of my head, would ya mind gettin' the hell out of it?"_

 _"Aw but I just got here! Do you know how long it took for that area of my brain to actually repair itself?"_

" _I can imagine," Tony replied. "Does this mean you're gonna be riding my channel now? I'd really hate to have to come down there and give your brain something else to repair."_

" _I'd tell you not to make threats, but this is the most entertainment I've had in years. No I won't be in constant contact with you. It would be nice, however, if you'd tune me in when you're watching Jeopardy or something. I mean, while you decide what to do..."_

" _Not really sure how to do that, Gideon," Tony said impatiently._

" _Just do what I do. Do what you do when you want to talk to your Timothy friend."_

" _How do you know about that?" Tony asked, now worried._

" _Hello...I'm in your head."_

" _Quit nosing around! You won't make friends if you can't respect their privacy."_

" _You're worried I'll make him another target. Well don't. I'm not after anyone. I never really was. It was always about getting rid of what's inside of me."_

" _Yeah, yeah, you wanna die. We get it."_

" _I don't know that I want to die," he replied. "I'd like to simply live as a human again; die when I grow too old." They were both silent for a long moment._

" _Did you know we can heal people?" Tony asked. Then he found himself showing Gideon somehow, revealing that memory to him._

" _You...gave him something," Gideon said. "You gave him part of your gift, and you were left with nothing. How is it that you're so much stronger now?"_

" _I dunno," he said with a shrug. "It was just gone. I was growing gray hairs and everything."_

" _You were aging..."_

" _Then I got myself killed. Suddenly Tim's got his psychic mojo back and I'm betting my cards for a new CW show."_

" _Don't you see? We can shift the power. If you could give yours to him, then perhaps there's a way to transfer my own to...something like a super-capacitor. I could finally be free..."_

" _You're forgetting the part where it came back."_

" _Semantics! It just needs to be further researched. I could be doing that now, if I was free of this watery prison."_

" _I tell ya what. You get outta my head, and I'll talk it over with my team and see what we can do. I'm not making any promises. If we don't feel like it's a good idea, I can at least promise that we'll look into the capacitor idea."_

" _They won't let me out," Gideon replied sadly. "They have no reason to trust me, and I don't blame them."_

" _Maybe it'd help if I wasn't stuck in here with you. I can only imagine what's going on for them right now..."_

 _*~.~*_

"It doesn't make any sense!" McGee said as he worriedly checked the surveillance in the Camper lab on his laptop. "There's no movement. He seems to be unconscious still. I don't under-" his sentence cut short when he pulled up the vitals. "There's erratic brain activity," he told them. "I..." He wasn't sure what to say to that, and he looked across the table at Tony, where the others had carefully moved him to sit down. His eyes where still white, and he remained unresponsive.

Gibbs sat right beside his SFA, being certain to catch Tony if he began to list. Ducky and Palmer were at his other side trying to monitor his vitals. Abby and Ellie were crowded on either side of Tim as he worked. "This doesn't seem possible..."

"Apparently it is, McGee," Gibbs said a tad aggravated. "How can we disconnect them?"

"Well there's only ever been one time we've witnessed that take place," Tim said grimly, meeting Gibbs' eyes. "I could drive up there and shoot him, if you'd like."

"I'm not seeing any abnormalities in his vital signs, Jethro," Ducky told him. "Perhaps we could hold off on anything drastic for the time being."

"My guess would be that if we had an electroensephalogram handy," Abby said, "We would see the same type of activity happening as Gideon here. You take a look at his readings here and tell me if it looks at all damaging to you." Ducky passed the blood pressure cuff end to Palmer as he moved to look at the screen.

"I've never seen anything like this," he said in awe. "Whatever the Contingency properties have done to make this communication with Anthony possible is far beyond what I believe anyone could begin to understand."

"Could it be causing damage?" Gibbs asked.

"I can't give you the answer to that, I'm afraid..."

Then Tony's eyes closed tightly, and everyone was staring in silence, waiting for something to happen. After a few moments, Tony's eyes blinked back open and they were back to normal again, the green in them almost shining as he seemed to come back to himself.

"Tony, you with us?" Gibbs asked.

Tony looked at him for a moment before replying, "Yeah. That was super weird," he said as he looked around the room. "Whaaaaat happened here?"

"Your eyes went white and you were just frozen there," Tim told him. "Did he speak to you?"

Tony's eyes flitted for a second before he realized that McGee must know somehow. "Yeah," he told them. "He's sort of conscious in a way, trapped in that tank. He wants out so he can research."

"His research is what got him in trouble in the first place," Ellie said.

"But he wants to research something new, this time," Tony said. "He wants to use the experience I had with McGee as a starting point. He thinks there's a way to shift the power into a...like a big capacitor or something. It should theoretically have the same effect as when I brought Tim back."

"Doesn't he realize the powers are back though?" Tim asked.

"Yeah, but...he seems to think that there's a way around that part. I honestly have no idea, guys. I mean, he's got a good theory and it should be looked into, but..."

"Letting him out could mean bad things," Tim reminded them.

"Indeed," Ducky said. "But perhaps we can do the research ourselves."

"It'd take a while," Ellie said. "But maybe if you keep him in the loop, his expertise could make it go a bit faster."

"Yeah, he might know a lot more about this than we think," Abby said. "Getting his data would get the ball rolling in the right direction."

"Maybe there's a way we can tap into Tony's signal," Jimmy chimed in, and they all looked over at him. "I mean, if we could get access to an MRI machine, if and when Gideon contacts Tony again, we could put him in there and pinpoint exactly what part of the brain is intercepting these signals. Not to mention his link with Agent McGee as well. If we can pinpoint the location, we might be able to find a frequency that could pick up what's being transmitted."

"Like a radio signal?" Gibbs asked.

"Sort of, yeah. I mean...it's just a theory, but..."

"It's a possibility," Ducky stated. "Unlike attempts to read one's mind, there is literally communication taking place along these signals. It would prove quite interesting to at least try. Alas, wherever would we be able to access an MRI machine?" Gibbs watched Tim scratch at the back of his neck.

"You got one of those things in your lab, McGee?" he asked with a raised brow. Tim didn't answer at first.

"Oh my god, you've got one in your lab!" Tony said with an amused look on his face.

"Not...not exactly..."

*~.~*

"Could ya do me a favor and not give me crap about this, Tony?" Tim said as he, Tony and Gibbs walked through a long aisle of outdoor storage units. "Back when this all started, I kinda...began collecting things that we might need. Mostly at auctions, and online. A lot of it actually didn't cost much, thanks to friends at Johns Hopkins. When they retire a functioning machine, they give me a heads up before public auction."

"Ladies and gentlemen," Tony said as McGee opened the lock on the door to his storage space. "Announcing the next location of American Pickers!" Gibbs actually grinned at that, and Tim pulled open the door. There was a plastic curtain they needed to step through before they were inside. Time flipped the light on, and much to Tony and Gibbs' surprise, it was more like a hangar than a storage unit.

"McGee, are you Doctor Who?" Tony asked as he put his hands on his hips. "'cause this place is much bigger on the inside."

"Funny, Tony," Tim said as he began pulling plastic sheets off of the items that sat in rows across the floor.

"Oh a pool table!" he said excitedly when Tim pulled the plastic off of it. "Absolutely a necessity!" he said as he wiped his hands over the green felt.

"Actually, I was thinking of using it as a telekinetic exercise," Tim told him.

"Okay. Well that sounds fun, too. But hey! I know where I'm bringing a 12 pack Friday night! Ow!" he squeaked when he felt Gibbs' hand hit the back of his head. "Sorry, boss. I'll definitely probably be at work Friday night..." Gibbs half smiled out of Tony's sight.

"Here it is," Tim said, relieved as he revealed the machine.

"Looks broken," Gibbs said.

"It was taken apart for transport. I haven't had time to put it together. I figure I might be able to get Abby to help out."

"Okay so where's the rest of it?" Tony asked. "Monitors and computers... You need a wall or something, right? Radiation..."

"This doesn't expose you to radiation, Tony."

"Magnetic resonance imaging," Gibbs spelled out for him. "Magnets and radio signals."

"That's right," McGee said with a grin.

"Wow, boss," Tony said, astonished with his knowledge.

"Sometimes ya run outta things to do when you're waiting at the ER," he replied with a shrug.

"As for the rest," Tim said as he began pulling at another sheet of plastic. "Here it is." It was like something out of a science fiction movie, Tony thought. A white metallic cabinet lined with monitors and other little gadgets stood about a foot away from the dismantled machine. "The actual computers are in here," he said, tapping a knuckle on the cabinet. "It's pretty old, but with some upgrades, it'll do what we need it to do."

"How the hell could you afford all this stuff, man? I know you wiped out your book money years ago."

"Eh...that Western Gibbs magically knew I was writing? I got an advance. A really REALLY big advance."

"And you spent it on out of date medical equipment?" Gibbs asked with narrowed eyes.

"I spent like a quarter of it on this stuff," Tim insisted. "And it really wasn't that much. The fact that Abby and I can do all the upgrades and repairs cuts way down on the cost, too."

"You got all this for researching Contingency," Gibbs surmised. "There's a lot more stuff in here. Is that all research stuff?" Tim stared at him for a moment.

"Gibbs, are you sure you don't have some of this Contingency stuff in your system?"

"It would explain so much," Tony said, his eye twitching at the thought. Gibbs glared at Tim.

"Okay so it's not _all_ medical stuff," Tim confessed, then began walking further back into the unit as he spoke. "I kinda got inspired watching an Arrow marathon, and got this idea..."

"Oo was it the one where he got the-" Tony started.

"Arrow marathon?" Gibbs asked.

"It's this really great show about this guy who learned all these fighting techniques and now he's like a superhero, but-"

"Please tell me you didn't buy DiNozzo a supersuit," Gibbs growled, interrupting Tony's ramblings.

"No, boss," Tim replied with a laugh. " I uh..." he said as he started pulling a large sheet of plastic that laid over a larger expanse of floor space. "I kinda started making us a secret lair." The sheet slipped the rest of the way off to reveal a long table equipped with several monitors, computer casing installed on the underside of the table itself. The screens started flashing on when McGee hit a button.

"Whoa, McSmoak," Tony said as he admired the layout.

"Secret from who, McGee? Super villains?" Gibbs asked sarcastically.

"Well not...exactly," Tim attempted to defend himself. "Actually, the idea came to me when Tony told me about the apocalypse nightmare. Thought it might be a good idea to have access to city surveillance and then some eyes of our own where you wouldn't normally have it. At least...in the surrounding area, anyway."

"The only super villain there is, is locked up right now."

"That we know of," Tim said. "Who knows how many of Gideon's experiments are out there?"

"He never got any of them to survive," Gibbs countered.

"Or...he didn't think so."

"Like he disposed of them, but some of them regenerated?" Tony asked curiously.

"Maybe. Or maybe he just doesn't remember any of the ones that survived," Tim suggested.

Gibbs closed his eyes for a moment and shook his head. "Even if this was so, what makes you think they'd be anywhere near here?"

Tim's phone started to buzz then, and he pulled it out to look at the screen. "It's Camper," he said. "There's been a breach." He quickly moved to sit in the chair in front of the computer screens and began typing at high speed. Gibbs and Tony walked toward him to watch.

The screen in front of him lit up with live surveillance of the outside of the camper, and the screens on either side of it showed the inside and the lower level. The door to the camper was lying on the ground completely separated from it.

They all spotted the perpetrator on the other screen in the ground level footage. It was impossible to see who it was, the figure in black with a motorcycle helmet. Whoever it was, they were trying to get into the sub level. Tim dialed Camper.

" _Awaiting command,"_ the voice said as Tim put it on speaker and set it down on the table top.

"Put up audio!" Tim said.

" _Audio engaged."_

"Who are you?" Tim said, and the figure abruptly turned around in search of who had spoken.

" _I don't know who you are,"_ the woman's voice sounded from the screen. _"But I know what you're keeping here, and I intend to destroy it!"_

"If you think you'll be able to kill him, you're wasting your time," Tim told her. But the woman continued to try and get the hatch to open. "He can't be killed. That's why we're keeping him there. He can't get out, but if you go down there and mess with his containment, you're gonna set him free and bad things are going to happen." She seemed to pause in her movements.

" _He's not just hiding out? He's imprisoned?"_ she asked.

"We shot him in the head and got him into an impenetrable tank. He's been down there for years now. He can't get out." The woman was still and silent again, seeming to think it over. "Ma'am, can you tell me who you are?"

" _I'm one of Frankenstein's monsters,"_ she replied, then removed her helmet. Her skin was dark, but patched with white, like she had vitiligo. Her curly hair was just down past her ears. But the thing that stood out the most was her left eye. It was completely white, like Tony's had been earlier that evening...

*~.~*

tbc...


	6. Chapter 6

"My name is Rhoda," the woman said where they sat in the diner Gibbs frequented. Gibbs sat beside her, while Tim and Tony sat across from them. "Gideon got a hold of me in '75," she explained. "Kept me at his house and fed me and these other girls all kinds of drugs. I mean, it was voluntary. It was the 70s. But we had no idea what he was giving us. We just took it and had good times.

"After a while though, he stopped giving it to us. Started shooting us up with something. Next thing I know, I'm waking up in an alley with a couple of the other girls. Only... _they_ weren't waking up. I was so freaked out, I just ran. Ran right into traffic, in fact." Tim and Tony grimaced. "Woke up in a morgue." She started to look extremely uncomfortable then. "Looked at my naked body on this metal table and saw the Y incision all sewn back up, and that's when I knew... I had died and I had come back. I damn sure wasn't gonna stick around to see what they'd do to me if they found me breathing after they'd done the autopsy. So I grabbed some scrubs and got the hell outta there. Ran to my spot and grabbed my bag, and I hopped the next bus outta town and never looked back." She got quiet for a moment.

"You've been running for nearly 45 years?" Tony asked quietly. Rhoda let out a small laugh from her nose as she looked up at him.

"Didn't run that long," she replied. "I made the mistake of thinking I could settle down, get married and have a normal life. Then somewhere down the line my husband started getting wrinkles and gray hair, and I kept staying the same. Thought maybe I just had great genes, but hell I never knew my folks. I grew up on the street. My skin kept me there until I met my husband. He was everything to me," she said as her gaze drifted off somewhere out the window. "And I never could give him any kids. I always blamed whatever Gideon did to me for that.

"When he died, my whole world changed around me. I had everything I would ever need, but when he left, something inside me just..." A tear slipped down her cheek, and Gibbs put a hand over hers. She looked down at their hands for a moment. "I became an angry, bitter woman. Suppose I still am," she said with a small, sad smile as she looked up at Gibbs, then to Tim and Tony. "But back then, my anger had strange things happening around me. I started seeing things. Energies. Like one of them psychic aura readers. But I could see it in _things_ too, not just people. Things that meant something to someone. Took me months to realize it was pointing me to things I needed to see. Like instinct personified.

"Over the years I figured out how to use it for what I _wanted_ to look for..."

"And that's what led you to Camper," Tim surmised.

"Sorry 'bout the door," she told him.

"Already have someone fixing it."

"I made the trip to meet you guys because I felt your aura. I knew that somehow...we're connected. I know that sounds weird as hell, but..."

"Trust me when I say we totally get it," Tony said.

"It's you, isn't it?" Rhoda asked, looking at Tony. "I've never met anyone else like me. Always thought it was just me an that asshole. Pardon my French." She looked around at them all again. "How you have friends, I can't imagine. It's been so long since I could talk to someone without keeping half of what I am a secret from them. When did he get to you?" she asked.

"Few years back," Tony told her, his gaze dropping to the table top. "'s why I've got friends still." Tim could feel the pain the thought caused him.

"We're trying to find a way to get the compound out of anyone who's got it," Tim picked up for him. "We think there's a way to transfer it. Whether it be to another person or to an object. It doesn't stick around once it's released, but if there's a way to transfer it to a capacitor, we might be able to harness it. Like a battery. Thing is, it replicates itself somehow."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"So far we've figured out that a big enough chunk of that energy transfers over, what little is left will go into kind of a hibernation, theoretically. It doesn't show itself at all. The aging process resumes as if it's gone. But under certain life-threatening circumstances it replicates itself, rapidly refueling the host so that it can continue to survive inside of it."

"How do you know this?" she asked. "Is this something that happened to you?" she asked Tony.

"It's a long story, but yeah."

"How long was it dormant?"

"A few years," he told her. "Now it's back stronger than ever."

"How did you transfer the energy?"

"By accident, actually."

"Before we uh...continue any deeper with this conversation," McGee said, "I think we should go someplace a bit more private." Gibbs noticed then that there was a group of people heading inside. He hadn't even noticed the cars when they had pulled up.

"Let's go to my place," Tony suggested. "No one ever comes to Casa DiNozzo, and it's a shame because there's a lot of entertainment there."

"Abs and Bishop are still at mine though," Gibbs told him. "Plus you know I've got the most room to crash."

"Speaking of," Tony said as he looked at Rhoda. "Do you have a place in town?" She raised a brow at him. "I mean somewhere to sleep for the night."

"I don't sleep," she told him. "I mean I don't need to. My body will heal without it. Unless I use my power a whole lot. But it's more like I pass out than sleeping. Got a place in Montana, and I know a bunch of places to crash if I need to."

"Guess what I was trying to say is that I could get you a room. Or...you could stay at my place. I'll crash at Gibbs' house if that makes you more comfortable."

"You're not afraid I'll take your stuff?" she said with a slight grin.

"Not unless you've got an overwhelming desire for DVDs," McGee said with a laugh.

"You a movie buff too?" she asked Tony.

Tony's face went slack. "You like movies?"

"I've been collecting for 40 years. Super 8, VHS, hell I've got HD DVDs. Remember that 14 days in history?"

"This is all at your place in Montana?"

"Nah. I've got a cabin in Virginia. Off the beaten path. About a quarter of them are there. The rest are in storage. You don't even wanna know how many there are."

"I kinda do," he replied, fascinated.

"Can we continue this on the road?" Gibbs asked as he slipped out of the booth.

"Sure thing, boss," Tony replied as they all filed out after him. The men headed for Gibbs' car as Rhoda mounted her motorbike, some kinda Kawasaki that looked about 20 years old.

"Hey Tony," she called before he could get into the car. "16,702." She smiled at the look on his face before putting her helmet on.

"Just follow us," Gibbs told her with a smirk. "Tony, get in the car." Tony obeyed, closing the door once he was inside, and Gibbs began to pull out onto the road.

"There's no way," Tony said to no one in particular.

"No way what?" Tim asked.

"That she has almost 17 thousand movies in her collection. That's just...not possible!"

"Been collecting for 40 years, she said," Gibbs reminded him.

*~.~*

"Okay so, I'm guessing there's a bunch of duplicates," Tony said when they were all inside Gibbs' house. "Like you got DVDs that you had VHS movies for already."

"Nope," she replied. "No duplicates. I've got most of the VHSs and Super 8s in storage, but there's no two the same, I don't think."

"But it's a possibility!"

"Tony, if half of her movies were duplicates, it'd still be way bigger of a collection than you have," Tim said as they all walked into the dining room where Abby and Ellie were still apparently discussing the supplement plan.

"Rhoda," Gibbs said as the others looked up. "This is Abby and Ellie. They work with us, and they know everything we do."

"Nice to meet you," Ellie was the first to stand and shake her hand.

"You think maybe tomorrow we could ask you some questions?" Abby asked as she took her turn shaking hands. "Like...stuff about what abilities you have and if you've learned anything specific over the years?"

"I uh...guess I don't have anything better to do," she replied. "Can I ask why?"

"Sure!" Abby replied as they all sat back down. "A few of us are working on a supplement for Tony. You know, for when you use you abilities more than usual."

"I'm not sure I understand."

"In the beginning, when you first started using you abilities, did you get sick afterward? Nose bleeds? Anything?" Tim asked.

Rhoda seemed to ponder the question, but eventually shook her head. "I remember getting headaches at first. Not too bad, but they'd go away in an hour or so." She glanced around the table. "Why? Does that happen to you?" she asked Tony.

"If I'm going full force for too long, yeah," he replied. "Or if something new starts happening. Takes a bit of practice before there's not so much of an after effect."

"Wait...something new? Are you telling me you've got more than one ability?" she asked, curious as she cocked her head to one side.

"Does that mean other than healing and not being able to kick the bucket, your ability is limited to this aura thing?" Ellie asked.

"Well there's a lot of layers to the aura thing," Rhoda defended. "I can track from thousands of miles away. I can tell if someone's lying to me. Stuff like that. What is it you can do exactly, Tony?"

"Heh..." he felt as though he'd be bragging at this point. "At first," he told her, "I would get visions of things that were going to happen to my team. Or to me. Like I was getting a heads up so I could save them."

"That sounds...awesome and probably awful as well," she said.

"Yeah," he said with a small laugh. "Well it's selective," he continued. "Doesn't always tell me everything that's gonna happen. I'm not too sure how it works, to be honest. Then there's the telekinesis. I can move things sometimes. I'm better at it now, but it makes me sick when I try to do it too much. Oh and then there's the psychic thing with McGee."

"Wait, I thought it was just you?" Rhoda questioned.

"That brings us back to that discussion we left off on at the diner." Tony seemed to stop then, oddly feeling like he didn't want to talk about that incident. Tim had to have felt it, because he immediately picked it back up.

"I got shot," Tim told her. "I bled out, and Tony brought me back somehow. He didn't realize what he was doing and he still doesn't know for sure, but somehow he transferred the energy into me."

"It didn't stay for any longer than it took to heal him," Gibbs added. "Somethin' about how it enters your system."

"We figured that since my exposure was through Tony, and not the serum itself like he'd been exposed to, that it had nothing to...hold onto," Tim said. "What happened after that, though, is that somehow Tony and I are linked. At first we could talk to each other, like, in our heads. It didn't last long though. It was gone for years. It just started coming back a few weeks ago, but I wasn't hearing him talk. I was feeling what he was feeling, and sometimes getting images."

"I..." Rhoda started, then looked as though she was trying to decide whether or not to tell them. "I could hear Gideon," she said. "Didn't start till a few weeks ago, but I could hear his voice in my head. He wasn't talking to me, but I heard him. Thought I was crazy and finally lost my mind."

"What do you mean he wasn't talking to you?" Gibbs asked.

"I mean I don't think he knew I was listening in," she replied. "He doesn't talk that often, and sometimes his words are muffled. Like earlier tonight, I could hear that he was talking, but it sounded like he was in another room. I couldn't make out what he was saying, but it lit up his aura enough for me to find him."

"He was talking to me earlier tonight," Tony told her. "So you've got a tap on the old man, and this is new?"

"Yeah, like I said, it just started a few weeks ago. He didn't seem so much like he was talking to someone as much as to himself. He'd say things like he couldn't hear someone anymore. I dunno who..."

"He was likely talking about Tony," Abby said. "Before they imprisoned Gideon, Tony did something to cut him out."

"Hurt like a sonofabitch," Tony said with a half grin. "Not sure I'd know how to do it again, but it was like snapping metal. One minute he was in my head and wouldn't leave, and the next my head felt like it was on fire."

"He had a seizure," Gibbs recalled. "Tim had to shoot Gideon in the head to stop him screamin'. Then everything seemed to stop. But however he did it, it wasn't easy and it probably wasn't safe either."

"But he was outta my head, and that's what mattered," Tony said. "Gideon is kinda...borderline personality disorder, manic, if you can even diagnose him with something in particular. When he's in a manic state of paranoia or anger, it's the hardest to deal with when he's jamming my head full of it.

"Right now he seems to be calm. Dare I say collected. I think he might even be...respecting my privacy at the moment, so that's unexpected, but nice. I really don't think he's a bad guy. He's just...gone mad."

"That doesn't mean he should be let out," Rhoda said. "He's dangerous. And like you said, if he goes manic, who knows what he'll do?"

"The only way we could give him what he wants," Tim said, "Would be to create a reinforced environment that he's incapable of getting out of. If we could figure out how to...suppress..." Tim's eyes wandered off into the air in front of him in thought.

"That's it, Tim!" Ellie exclaimed. "Instead of focusing all our efforts on this capacitor idea just yet, we should figure out if there's a way to suppress the abilities."

"Keeping him in that tank would take considerably longer to research," Abby agreed. "But if we could let him out and maintain everyone's safety by giving him something that keeps him harmless, it might actually be in our best interest."

"You wanna let him out?" Rhoda asked incredulously. "You don't even know if this stuff would work on him! Who are you gonna test it on? My days of being a guinea pig are over!"

"We don't have to test it on anyone," Abby replied. "All we'd need are blood samples. I can expose the samples to it to see if it has any effect. Gideon would be the guinea pig."

"And I'm sure he won't even fight it," Tony said.

"How would you even know it was working on him?"

"I think I have a way to test that," Tony said...

*~.~*

tbc


	7. Chapter 7

The team and it's most recent superhero member were setting things up in Tim's super secret storage unit. It was coming together pretty nicely. Tim had been listening to Tony hum for the last forty five minutes and it started getting on his nerves probably forty four minutes ago.

"Tony, are you humming the Rhoda theme song?" he asked, his frustration showing through intentionally.

"Was I humming it?" Tony asked, turning to look at him slightly horrified. "Sorry 'bout that. Been in my head for hours. Good catch though, probie," he said.

"Who wouldn't recognize the worst theme song of the 70s?"

"Young people, Tim. That's who."

"That's not necessarily true. I never saw it till my mom started going through her old VHS tapes she'd recorded them on."

"Having a mom who has VHS tapes makes you old."

"Watch who you're calling old, Tony. You're older than me, after all."

"There's nothing wrong with being old, Timmy. We're wiser. We've got more experience. Ultimately we're more interesting..." His sentence trailed off and Tim noticed the faraway look on his friend's face now. _"Of course I probably won't age now,"_ Tony's voice sounded in Tim's head, and his eyes widened for a second because that hadn't happened in a long time. _"And I'll be around to watch all of you age and then eventually..."_

" _Are you doing that on purpose?"_

"Doing what on purpose?" Tony asked, looking back over at Tim.

" _Guess that answers that question,"_ Tim replied with his mind, and it took Tony a second for that fact to hit him.

"So _that's_ back," he said with a slightly crazed look in his eye. "We're seriously gonna have to work on some rules."

"Already have rules," Gibbs said as he set an item down near them.

"I meant specifically for McMindreader and me," Tony told him. "Apparently we're back to full communication capacity now. Just gotta figure out how to limit that to intentional communication."

"Either of you get any side effects using it?" Gibbs asked with narrowed eyes.

"I don't think so," Tim replied, glancing at Tony to see if he would say differently.

"I don't think that was ever much of an issue."

"If it becomes one, you let me know," Gibbs told them.

"Yes, boss," Tony replied with a quick salute. Gibbs shook his head, a smirk playing on his face before turning back to his previous task. _"Movie night tonight, Tim?"_ Tony asked silently.

" _Uh...sure I guess. If we ever get done here."_

" _I'm thinkin' we should try and figure out how to turn this thing off. You really don't wanna be in my head all the time."_

" _Maybe you should stop thinking so loudly."_

"Ha! Funny, Tim. You should be a comedian."

"I'll stick to my day job, thanks."

"What are you two on about?" Bishop asked as she finished plugging up one of the machines.

"Just trying to figure out how to...uh..." McGee thought for a moment. "I guess block each other out of our heads when we need to."

"What you should do," Rhoda chimed in, "Is go to Vegas. You could fund an underground lair with the money you'd win."

"She makes a good point," Ellie said with raised brows. "If we weren't concerned with breaking the law."

"Breaking the rules, maybe," Rhoda said. "Cheating isn't breaking the law."

"But it's cheating."

"But it'd be cheating for the benefit of mankind," she argued, then looked back at Tim and Tony. "You could get a jet!"

"A jet would be cool," Tony replied with a small smile as he daydreamed about it.

"Why would he need a jet?" Ellie replied incredulously.

"Because crime isn't secluded to the DC Metro area," Rhoda told her.

"So what you're saying is that not only would we be fighting crime in DC, but all over the world?" McGee asked. "Tony's not Superman, guys."

"Which is why he'd need a jet," Gibbs chimed in. "He can't fly."

"You're entertaining this?" Tony asked with an amused grin.

"Entertaining maybe. But nah," Gibbs replied. "We already fight crime, in case you forgot."

"And Tony's got enough on his plate between this and NCIS," Tim added.

"Well I don't," Rhoda said after a moment. "I was mostly kidding about the jet. I kinda hate flying. But I wouldn't mind traveling if the moment called for it."

"Guess you're stuck standing on rooftops, waiting for someone to need help," Ellie said.

"That's Batman, guys," Tony said with a small laugh. "I thought this whole secret lair thing was supposed to negate the need to go out blind."

"It will," Gibbs stated. "And we're not playing superhero here. I wanna make that very clear to everyone," he said as he looked around the room at them. "We're a team-"

"I'm not part of your team, Agent Gibbs," Rhoda said. They all grew silent as they looked at her. "I'm not glued to DC or to conventional methods of crime fighting."

"We're not vigilantes," Gibbs replied, narrowing his eyes as he stepped toward her. "You do not get to be people's judge, jury and executioner."

"Who said anything about execution?" she said with wide eyes.

"When you're out there alone making choices and decisions on a regular basis without any rules, the lines can get blurred. There's no need for super powers to stop bad people."

"Obviously it could help," she argued.

"Yeah. Of course it can! If that's what it is. Help. You help with our guidance so the lines don't get blurry." Gibbs glanced around the room again. "Maybe we don't know what those guidelines will be entirely. Not yet. But we _will_ learn and adapt." He looked back at Rhoda. "You _will_ adapt, Rhoda, because sometimes that's the difference between good and...Gideon." Rhoda flinched slightly at that. "Gideon didn't start out being what he is now. He ended up like that because he was alone. He made his decisions without anyone around to keep him grounded. That's what we're here for. That's what we wanna be here to do for you too."

"I get it, Gibbs," she replied. "I do. But it doesn't seem fair that we're only helping locally."

"I didn't say that. We just can't take a jet to New York City because someone's robbing a liquor store. And even if you _were_ Batman, you forget he protected one place."

"Gotham. Nice, boss," Tony said.

"Who are you to decide which crimes we fight and which we ignore?" Rhoda asked, shaking her head in frustration.

"We can't save everybody," McGee chimed in. "Even if we _all_ had these powers, there's no way we could expect to save everyone. That's not fair. It's not about choosing who, it's about _how many_ we can help."

"And even though our jobs usually don't begin until someone is already dead," Ellie said, "The more help like this that we can have, the more we can save from being hurt by the same people."

"Unless you _wanna_ be a government weapon," Gibbs said. "You think they wouldn't recruit you and force you into terrorist cells? You're reusable material. You think they'll give a damn about the pain as long as you can't stay injured, or worse dead?"

"You think they could force me to do anything?" she replied cockily.

"You've really got no idea what they're capable of, do ya?" Gibbs said quietly. Rhoda looked back and forth between his eyes, eventually settling them somewhere on the floor. "I wanna be clear again, no one is forcing you to stick with us. You wanna be part of this, you're welcome to be. But if you're not gonna play by the rules, we can't help you."

"What _are_ the rules?"

"Like I said, we don't have them all just yet. But Contingency Rule 1: Don't be a vigilante."

"Rule 2," Tony said, "Never run out of milk."

"Wait wait...what?" Rhoda questioned.

"Milk helps when there's pain from over-usage of abilities," Tim told her. "You haven't used it?"

"I haven't needed to...but either way, I'm lactose intolerant. I doubt it'd help. In fact, the few times I've had dairy in the past several years I've actually gotten more sick than usual with it."

"Curious," Ducky exclaimed under his breath. "I wonder if the type of exposure or a certain element of the serum differed enough from Tony's that you would have such different responses, not only in your abilities but the way your body interacts with it." They were all looking at him now. "Of course, in order to figure that out, I'd have to get some information from Gideon himself, if he should even remember."

"And it does beg the question," Jimmy chimed in, "Could there be more people like the two of you out there, having survived—maybe even unknowingly—the experiments Gideon's been conducting all these years?"

"Gideon was trying for a survivor, Mr. Palmer," Ducky replied. "The way he aggressively sought out Anthony after he survived the exposure suggests that, as far as he knew, there were never any others. Our new friend here is likely the one exception."

"Let's hope so," Tony said. "I'd hate to think there's been others that've been found and locked away in some government facility or worse..."

Ducky fished out his phone from his pocket when it began to vibrate suddenly. "Ah. Well, my dear friends, it seems that the substitute MCRT is in need of my and Jimmy's assistance. I'm afraid we'll have to bid you farewell for the evening."

"Substitute MCRT?" Gibbs questioned with furrowed brows.

"Director Vance and Agent Dorneget for the time being," the doctor replied. "Abigail is already on her way into the office."

"If you need anything-" Gibbs began, but Ducky finished for him.

"Call you, yes. I'm sure we won't need to do that, Jethro, but of course one of us will call if we find it necessary."

"Don't do anything super cool without me, okay, guys?" Jimmy said quietly to Tony and McGee before he headed out with Ducky. McGee smirked at the statement and looked down at his watch.

"Wow, it's later than I thought," he said. "Are you guys hungry?"

"Wouldn't mind eating something," Gibbs replied.

"Yeah," Tony said. "We should call it a night here anyway. We can pick it back up tomorrow." Then he looked at Rhoda. "You gonna stick around?" She looked at him for a moment, then to Gibbs and McGee, and back to Tony.

"If you're really serious about wanting me here," she replied. "I don't know how I can help, but-"

"Your existence is already help," Tony told her.

"Probably been a while since you stayed in one place for long," Gibbs added. "Longer than that since finding someplace you might belong." Rhoda swallowed and her eyes shifted back and forth between his for a moment.

"Can I stay here?" She gestured to the room they stood in.

"There's nowhere to sleep," Tony said with a raised brow.

"No bathroom either," Tim added.

"I told you I don't sleep," she said. "And I don't need to eat or drink either. I mean...I can, but I don't ever feel the need to, and it doesn't seem to adversely affect me. So no bathroom is okay for the time being, as long as one of you'll let me use their shower. Besides," she said with a sigh, "Seems like I could find something useful to do in here. I just need to make a trip to grab some of my things. I'd be back in a day."

"Is there a way to contact you while you're gone?" Gibbs asked. "In case something comes up."

"I'll give you my number," Tony told her. "You text me. That way I'll have yours, and if something happens, you can call us for help."

"Don't usually need anyone's help," Rhoda said with a lopsided grin. "But I guess it'd be kinda cool to have an actual saved contact in my phone for once..."

tbc...


	8. Chapter 8

It'd been three weeks since Rhoda left for her day trip.

No text. No call. No anything.

Abby and Tim had both tried to trace her via her phone, to no avail. It was either trashed or dead. Gibbs wasn't sure whether she'd run away or something had happened to her. Putting an APB out on her could get her into more trouble.

It wasn't until Tim got a hit on a BOLO he'd put out on her bike that they'd started piecing things together. They'd made the trip to Charlotte, North Carolina when McGee was able to track down an address connected to the insurance on the bike. Local PD told them that the bike had been abandoned at a local bar parking lot, though no one witnessed who the rider had been. The owner had let it sit there a while before calling it in, especially since it hadn't taken up too much space. He had figured someone would've been back for it, but three weeks was a long time.

"Doesn't look damaged," Tony commented as he looked the bike over. "I feel like she wouldn't have just left this behind. Something must've happened."

"Maybe Gibbs and Bishop have a better idea," Tim said as he pulled out his phone to call. "Hey, Bishop, I'm gonna put you on speaker," he said as Tony approached to listen in.

" _Well she's not here,"_ she began. _"But Tony, you should really check out this movie collection. I think you might actually need a moment alone with it."_

" _She had some packed,"_ Gibbs' voice added. _"She came here and started doing what she'd said she would."_

"Any sign of her phone?" Tony asked.

" _Nothing yet,"_ Bishop replied.

"You thinkin' someone called her up and they were gonna meet here?" Tim asked as he looked over at him.

" _She stopped mid-packing,"_ Gibbs said. _"Must've been in a hurry."_

"If she was running, she wouldn't have stopped at a bar," Tony said.

"Her cell record didn't show any incoming calls," McGee reminded them.

" _Uh...hey, guys?"_ Bishop cut in. _"There's a landline..."_

 _*~.~*_

"Y'all find anything useful?" the bar owner asked as Tony and Tim came back into the bar. Tony gestured to the payphone near the restrooms, and Tim looked over at it before looking up at the corners of the ceiling.

"Do you have a security camera in here?" Tony asked the man at the bar.

"Sure. It's Charlotte."

"I'm gonna have to ask to see the footage if possible."

"Uh yeah, sure. It's one of those digital things. Holds up to 30 days worth, then starts recording over the earliest ones. You should be good though. It's back in my office. You're welcome to it. Got the lunch crowd heading in any minute now and I'm short-staffed as hell, so help yourself."

"C'mon, McGee. You can do the honors."

*~.~*

" _I sent you the guy's photo, did you get it?"_ McGee asked over the phone.

"I got it!" Abby replied. "Running it through facial recognition software as we speak. So she never even set foot in the bar, huh? Sounds hinky."

" _One call was made from that payphone, Abs,"_ Tony said. _"He leaves right after that. Never comes back in."_

" _And the timestamp matches the call on Rhoda's landline records,"_ Tim chimed in. _"Question is, did she leave with him willingly? And if she did, why wouldn't she contact us?"_

"Have you checked the lost and found in the bar?" Abby asked.

" _We established she never came in, remember?"_ Tim said.

"Well yeah, but if she dropped it in the parking lot, someone could've turned it in." She could hear shuffling on the other line.

" _Abby, you're a genius!"_ She heard Tony say from a distance.

" _Wait. How do you even know if that's hers?"_

" _Because I saw it when she set it down on the table at the diner, and I'm a trained and very talented investigator, Timmy."_

" _Yeah okay, but there are millions of that same exact cellphone, Tony."_

" _There sure is! But! What are the odds that this phone would have the very same two cracks intersecting one another on the bottom right corner?"_

"You're so sexy when you're observant, Tony," Abby said with a wide grin.

*~.~*

"And we have power!" Tony said victoriously where he sat in the passenger seat, Gibbs in the driver's and Bishop and McGee in the back.

"What if there's a password?" Bishop asked.

"This old flip phone is from the stone age," Tony replied, then glanced at Gibbs. "No offense, boss. People don't steal stone age phones."

"Just another reason to have one," Gibbs commented.

"It _is_ more economical, actually. If I wasn't addicted to being able to literally do everything I need from my phone, I'd switch back. Oh hey! See?" He held the device up. "Case and point, she tried to send a message and it failed."

"Smart phones do that too," Tim said.

"She was sending me a message," Tony said a little more seriously now. "I guess because I'm her only contact. 'Family emergency. Not gonna be able to get back when I said I would." Tony scrolled up in the text box to where she'd texted him once when she had initially arrived in Charlotte to let him know she got there, and then his reply of 'see you tomorrow!'. Something stirred in his gut.

"What is it, DiNozzo?" Gibbs asked, eyes narrowed on the agent. Tony shook his head.

"Something about this...seems familiar somehow."

"Familiar how?"

"Something about this family emergency text. It's like I've seen it somewhere else."

"Wait, Rhoda doesn't have any family," Bishop said. "You're literally the only contact in her phone."

"Maybe it's some kinda code?" Tim offered. Then Tony's phone was ringing. He looked at the ID and answered it on speaker.

"We're all here, Abby," he said when he answered.

" _My search just got shut down!"_

"What do you mean?" Gibbs asked.

" _I mean there's a flag on this guy's face, Gibbs! I just got a call from Fornell. He's sending the BAU."_

"Wait, he's what?" Tony asked, surprised.

" _Apparently the guy in the photo you sent me? He's on their watch list."_

"Watch list for what?" Bishop asked.

"Oh my god..." Tony's eyes widened and were searching the air in front of him.

"You have JJ call me right away," Gibbs told Abby, the ended the call though the phone was still in Tony's hand. "You know something?" he asked Tony.

Tony looked over at him. "The Death Texter."

"What?"

"Cheesy name for a serial killer that chooses his victims with a similar modus operandi. Women. Usually college kids leaving for spring break or something like that. People who would already be leaving town and wouldn't necessarily be missed for a while. All of them had a message sent to whomever they were keeping tabs with, saying there was a family emergency and they wouldn't be back when they said they would..."

"A...a killer," McGee said. "So uh...he can't exactly make that stick for Rhoda."

"Doesn't mean she won't be suffering. And if he's figured out she's different..." Tony's sentence tapered off with the thought. Then he jumped when Gibbs' phone rang, letting out an embarrassed breath afterward as Gibbs pulled out his phone to answer it.

"Gibbs."

" _Agent Gibbs, it's JJ. Your forensics expert told me to call you."_

"You're flying into Charlotte?"

" _We're in the air now. Shouldn't be much longer actually. We've been hunting this guy for years. Abby said you know the latest victim?"_

"Yeah," he said, flinching almost imperceptibly at the word 'victim'.

" _And she's been missing for three weeks?"_

"She was supposed to be back in DC three weeks ago. Timestamp on the phone call matches the date she disappeared."

" _And no body has been found? This is different somehow, unless he's upping his game..."_

 _*~.~*_

"The Death Texter, or as we're calling him 'DT', usually dumps the body within nine days of taking them," Prentiss explained as she, Reid and Rossi met up with the NCIS team in the hotel lobby where they'd be staying."He's escalated drastically."

"That or he's been building up to this and simply not leaving his signature for us to trail," Reid added.

"But that doesn't seem like him at all," Prentiss argued. "DT wants to be heard. He _wants_ us to know when he's struck again. He's taunting us."

"By the time he dumps the body, he's already decided where he's going next," Rossi said. "Normally he leaves the state. It's why it's been so crucial to try and get to these disappearances as soon as possible. So far we haven't ever been able to figure out where and how he chooses to do his dirty work. None of the crime scenes have ever been discovered."

"Which means that wherever he takes them and tortures them," Prentiss said, "They can't be heard. We've never had a sighting aside from a similar phone call security footage capture back in 08."

"Whatever he's doing," Reid added, "He's expertly formulated the perfect ruse for luring them in, capturing them and transporting them to wherever he does his work."

"And when he's finished, he cleans the body, likely cleans the crime scene, and somehow manages to know exactly where and how to dump a body without being noticed," Prentiss finished.

"So what you're saying is that we won't find this guy," Tony said.

"Not necessarily," Reid said, but his explanation was cut short when JJ walked up to the group with two other team members.

"Hey, guys," she greeted the NCIS team. "Good to see you again. Introductions... Special Agent Gibbs, DiNozzo, McGee and Bishop, this is SSA Simmons and SSA Alvez." They all shook hands.

"Are they okay to discuss...Contingency in front of?" Gibbs asked.

JJ raised a brow. "Yeah, but...what does that have to do with this?"

"Most likely? The reason he upped his game." Gibbs looked at her and she narrowed her eyes for a moment.

"Okay. Then...we should probably go someplace a little more private to talk." She turned to Rossi. "You mind if we use your suite as a conference room?"

*~.~*

"She's like me," Tony said.

"Like...like mad scientist serum experiment you?" Prentiss asked.

"She's been around a lot longer than me," he told them. "We just crossed paths the evening before she took the trip to Charlotte. She was gonna come stay with us."

"Uh...hang on," Alvez said from where he sat on the couch in Rossi's room. "Mad scientist experiment? What am I missing?"

Rossi turned in his chair and took a long breath. "What you're about to hear, Luke and Matt, is absolutely confidential between the people in this room. It's imperative that you never speak of this to anyone. Not friends, not family. No one except those of us in this room right now. Do you understand?"

"Yeah," they said in unison.

"Buckle up," Rossi told them. "There's no getting off this ride..."

tbc...


End file.
